Hot Glue Stencils!

It's been a minute since I posted.  I've been sick, I've been getting cut on, I have been planning for a festival (https://www.southwestquilt.com). So yep, busy.  None the less I have been doing and making arty things.

I went to a Dixie Watercolor Society paint-in headed by watercolorist Dawn Miner.  A most excellent and fun session. Part of the paint-in tips and tricks portion of the day was how to take an ugly thing you have painted and turn it into at least less ugly OR something quite nice.  We all have them.  You do this with a stencil, a magic eraser scrubbie and a bit of water.  Lay a stencil over part of the ugly, lightly wet the scrubbie and very very gently lift paint where the stencil shows the paint thru with said scrubbie.

 Here is my ugly (she was an experiment I made trying not to use any pencil lines and just going for it with paint).  Bleck:

 I did all sorts of things to her trying to rehab her. Still bleck. So I brought her to the paint in and voila! Here she is post stencil scrubbie:

I don't hate her.  I may have to go back and fix a few things shading and brow wise.  Maybe try to sort that blouse into... a recognizable blouse😂, but not tossing her.

Some of the others in the paint-in had some amazing transformations. Most effective were landscapes and pieces where things got muddied or there was so much paint and or something that the image got boring.  Stencil, scrubbing, water... Whoa!  Try it. Thank you Dawn!  

 Enter hot glue stencils! I am cheap and I like to try.  So I made stencils with my glue gun.  I think you could also do it with silicone calk.  Especially nice for say if you wanted a big stencil.  You could just make a design template, run the calk over the template as smooth as you will and let her dry.  But back to what I did which was a little hacky and shaky, but I don't care. It will work for my purposes and I enjoyed free-styling it.  I did it with a mini glue gun.  A big one might be better to get the shakes out.

I got out an ancient silicone pan liner (any no stick surface would work), and squeezed out a bunch of shapes with hot glue from the gun, peeled it off the silicone liner and lo... stencils for free.

Some of these without a frame around the design can be manipulated into different shapes.  See those 2 ugly rings in the center?  Shaky.  They are probably going in the trash heap and I will make another.  Maybe.  Anyway, something fun to play with.  You could use them on a gelly plate too so - go wild.

If there is a soul reading this and you are near S Utah at the end of May, get thee to the Quilt and Fiber Art show in St. George.  It will be awesome!  You can also visit all the fabric stores and thread shop (YLI threads) while in town.  I will most likely be there at the fiber art booth.